


Love By A Thousand Cuts

by meaninglessblah



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-20 06:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18987463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meaninglessblah/pseuds/meaninglessblah
Summary: Soulmate AU where both persons can feel the others' pain, both physical and physiological. It doesn't leave any visible marks, but they'll always have the memory of it.Or: the universe plays a cruel joke on Tim Drake.





	1. Pressure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joverie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joverie/gifts).



Tim’s eleven when it happens. He’s up in his room, flicking through homework that he’s almost finished and shaking out his wrists to ease their ache. They’ve been hurting since before dinner, maybe two hours straight now, but they’ve faded to a dull throb such that he can almost push them out of his mind. 

Tim wonders, not for the first time, if his soulmate ever even feels his pain in comparison. He’s had the breath knocked out of him in the middle of the night before by an unseen force, lurching upright to clutch his stomach as the waves of phantom pain wash over him. His soulmate’s broken a few bones too, Tim’s pretty sure, with how much his left wrist felt like it was splitting off his forearm that night back in June. Tim wonders if his soulmate even notices Tim’s carpal tunnel, or his skinned knees, or his aching wisdom teeth that he’s scheduled to have removed next fall if the braces don’t pull his teeth into alignment by then. 

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like he’s looking through one-way glass, sharing his soulmate’s bruises and abrasions but him unable to reciprocate. Tim wonders if he’s being robbed of sharing his pain with that unknown someone, and then he wonders if it’s selfish to wish your pain upon someone, even if it’s just so they can understand your pain. 

Tim’s just finished rereading his last few assigned pages of homework when pain laces up through the right side of his skull so fiercely that his vision whites out for a minute. He doesn’t even have the chance to drag in enough breath to scream before his ribs light up, and Tim curls forwards across his desk, gripping the edge with white-knuckled fervour. 

 _What did they_ do _?_ Tim wonders with horrified awe, _fall off a building_? With how hard it is to draw in a breath, Tim has to assume they’ve fallen at least two stories directly onto their ribs. 

He’s actually felt this before, sort of, he realises after a few moment of blinding pain. A couple of years back, when the not-his-bruises were at their worst, there’d been a few times when his knees had split with agony or his sides had erupted with breathless fire. He hasn’t felt like this for a while now, so whatever buildings his soulmate had been falling off, they’d evidently improved their balance. Even Tim’s head doesn’t hurt so much nowadays, aside from the occasional dizzy spell. He mostly wakes up with the headaches in the early hours of the mornings, but he’s used to that dull throbbing now. 

This is- 

This is agony. 

Breathing is _hard_ , and it’s never been this hard. Tim shoves back from the desk, climbing shakily to his feet as he tries to straighten up, if only to alleviate his stunned diaphragm, which is braced for an attack it’s not receiving. It’s just starting to fade to manageable when another strike crashes down on his shoulder, and Tim collapses to his knees. 

Something clocks him across his hip, and then comes down on his abdomen, and Tim hunkers down, as if he can shield himself from his soulmate’s suffering. It’s never made a difference before, and Tim’s reminded again what if feels like to be a spectator in his own body. 

It’s the double blow across each side of his jaw that takes him all the way to the floorboards, because it knocks him out for a few brief, blacked out seconds. Tim jolts awake on the timber, arms wrapped around his midsection and curled into the fetal position. He wrings together enough terrified consciousness to scream. 

It doesn’t make it out of his throat. Something cracks his ribs, and it’s so visceral that Tim can swear he hears the snap of bone from how-ever-many miles away. 

And Tim’s _scared_ , because this isn’t just some schoolyard fight or unfortunate fall that his soulmate’s gotten into now. This is directed, this is intentional. And he can tell from the way his wrists are aching with a renewed fervour that his soulmate isn’t fighting this. Even without the visual, Tim knows the bruising pressure that restraints leave on his unblemished wrists; he’s felt it before, worked it out years back. He’d gotten the idea while watching Robin wriggle his way out of a set of cuffs through his camera lens. He’d been eight, and head-over-heels drunk on the thrill of chasing Batman and his jewel-toned ward up fire escapes. Had stared from between the panes of a warehouse window, awestruck, and convinced that maybe he’d make a good Robin. He had thick enough skin for it, his soulmate had ensured that. 

But that awe has abandoned him now, and Tim digs his toes into the wood and tries to roll onto his stomach, get his limbs under him so he can _move_ , if only to get away. 

There’s nowhere to go. The pain isn’t his, and the fight isn’t his either. 

He feels robbed, as if he’s been denied the opportunity to defend himself, and not for the first time, Tim rues how _unfair_ all this soulmate business is. 

It doesn’t stop either, and there’s never enough reprieve for Tim to draw in enough air to call for help, and he doesn’t have enough strength in his shaking limbs to force himself to his bedroom door. And all Tim wants in those hours is for his mom to walk in on him and find him and _hold_ him. But she never comes and Tim cries through a choked throat and clings to the pain. 

He passes out, eventually. And Tim quietly thanks every guardian angel that signs his cognizant release form, because when he slips over the cusp of unconsciousness he thinks of how sore he’s going to feel in the morning, and how he much he isn’t looking forward to pressing ice packs to bruises that aren’t there and squeezing his arms to hold in place bones that aren’t really broken, if only to alleviate the reminiscent pain for a short while. If only so he can replace that phantom pain with his own hotter, more present pain. As if that’s a more palatable substitute. 

But when Tim wakes, he doesn’t feel any pain. 

He just feels… cold. 

Not cold like the ice packs, or cold like the Alps his parents had taken him on vacation to when he was six, or the biting nip of Gotham winter at his nose. This is an aching cold. An empty cold. 

It feels like his bones have been turned inside out, the marrow exposed to the elements, and it stings in a blunt way. Tim doesn’t really have the words. 

He pushes to his feet with a numb trepidation. As if the next blow is just hiding around the corner, waiting for him to let his guard down. He glances around, frowning at the pale morning light seeping into his bedroom, at the inky shadows that aren’t deep enough to hide any monster. The ordeal seems to be over, and Tim knows he should feel relieved, but he just feels empty. 

It takes a few stunned, petrified minutes before the well of fear and grief spirals up through Tim, cracking him open. Tears burst from his eyes, and he cries, _sobs_ , heaving and clutching his chest because its  _hurts_ , but it’s a different sort of pain and it’s better than that _cold_ and _numb_. 

His mom overhears him, because she bursts into his room with broad concern already painted across her features. It pulls her brow into bright horror when she lays eyes on him, and she folds down to her knees to encase him, holds him with bruising strength. Doesn’t ask what happened, because she just _knows_ , and Tim cries into the crook of her shoulder and clings to her. Tim mourns for himself and for his soulmate and for the cold numb ache in his limbs until his sobs quieten and he can breathe steadily again. 

Tim doesn’t feel anything else from his soulmate after that. 

It takes him a few months of breath-holding and second-guessing his own minor abrasions before Tim finally considers that maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s not going to feel anything else from his soulmate. Maybe he’s- 

Tim considers the alternatives. Maybe they changed career paths. Maybe they moved city. Maybe they just stopped getting into fights. 

And when those don’t satisfy his logic-driven mind, Tim considers the alternatives’ alternatives. Maybe they have severely damaged nerve endings now. Maybe they lost limbs. Maybe they’re in a coma. 

Tim clings to those alternatives for a long time. Until he’s in junior high and he hasn’t felt anything - not even a stubbed toe or sprained wrist - for years. Tim files away the macabre mystery of his torpid soulmate and starts finding hobbies that he can distract himself with. 

Batman turns out to be a pretty good distraction. 


	2. Vitality

Tim's fifteen and in the Cave, gripping the edge of his desk with white-knuckled fury and watching his fingers turn purple from the pressure. His bo staff is on the tile between his ankles, left where he abandoned it. He couldn't keep his grip on it because his fingers  _ hurt _ . 

His whole hands throb in rhythm with his pulse, but his fingers are  _ shaking _ with pain. He'd nearly rattled the half-drunk mug of cold coffee he'd left before going on patrol half off the desk with the force of his trembling. 

And all Tim can think about is if it’s not  _ him _ \- But it can't be them. Can't be. They're dead. They're supposed to be dead. 

Four years and nothing. Four years and now  _ this _ . And Tim's gotten far more acquainted with the degrees of the pain scale in those years, but nothing like how his fingers feel now. 

It’d taken months, the longest most trying months of Tim’s life, to convince Bruce and then Dick to take him on, even though the latter had conceded more easily once the Batman’s judgement had passed.  Dick had been in a worse place than he was now, and Bruce would have agreed to pretty much anything to get Tim to stop stalking him day and night, but Tim had convinced them and that’s all that mattered. 

He’d convinced them to make him into the Robin substitute Batman needed, and it was all thanks to his absentee soulmate. 

Because Tim was objectively  _ shit _ at all this combat stuff. He’d been twelve and tiny, but by God he’d been too inquisitive for his own good, and stubborn to boot. So he’d begged his way into Bruce Wayne’s good graces, and when that hadn’t worked, he’d rationalised taking up the mantle. Tim had gotten a lot farther with that tact. Bruce had agreed to take him on for training, because his mind was sharp as a sword on a whetstone. He hadn’t needed much in the way of procedural training, so Bruce had handed him over to Dick to train. 

Dick had wiped the floor with him. Tim had eaten dust for three months before he’d finally started getting a grasp on the basics, and he’s pretty sure Dick would have given up far sooner if not for Tim’s ace-in-the-whole. 

The great thing about having a soulmate who had their ass handed to them intensively for years meant that by proxy, Tim  had weathered those blows too. His pain tolerance is far higher than a twelve-year-old who lives just west of the Diamond District should have. Tim can take a solid hit like he was born for it, and stay standing. Tim’s not oblivious to the fact that it’s the only thing that kept Dick on board with his training through that first year. 

Four years of packing on lean muscle and getting smacked around in the name of Robinhood, and Tim’s gotten above decent at not just walking the pain off, but handing it back to the best of them. He still can’t deal with whatever bullshit is happening to his fingers. 

If he didn't know better, he'd guess they'd been cleaved in two, or skinned bare, or melted through, or  _ something horrific _ because this isn't anywhere on the scale of normal. And all Tim can think of is how can a dead person's  _ fingers _ hurt? 

Tim's been staring at the screen for the better part of twenty minutes. He'd thought maybe if he found something else to focus on he could block out how his fingers feel like they've been ground through a mincer.  When his rationality had been drowned out by the ache in his hands, out of sheer desperation, he'd tried googling 'Can your soulmate change?'. He gets to the fourth results page of self-help inspirational books before he realises he's not going to get the answer he's looking for, and changes his search. 

'Can my soulmate be different?' leads him to a plethora of forums on the philosophical hand of fate that the universe has in soulmate designation. He reads through his fifteenth discussion board on the permanence of soulmate pairings before Tim shoves back up from the desk and resolves to do something physical to offset the pain. 

If he's going to have to live with it, he at least wants it to be by his own design. Call it controlling, or masochistic, but Tim likes to have a say in when and why he's in debilitating pain. He's gotten to used to it over the past few years, to being solitary in his pain. 

He's wrapping his fists in the gym when Dick comes back in off patrol. 

He shucks his domino and leans up against the doorframe, surveying Tim. There’s a welt underneath his left eye, making his cheekbone swell in the beginnings of a bruise. “You looking for a sparring partner or just a punching bag?” 

Tim flexes his fingers in the tight red wrap and thinks on it. “Partner,” he answers, and Dick smiles tiredly as he steps into the room. 

He drops his domino to the edge of the mat and rolls his shoulders luxuriously, bringing his fists up in front of his face. Tim compliments his stance, keeping himself steady and low. Dick’s fast and sharper than he is, but Tim’s much better at using his environment, using tools to his advantage in a fight. He clenches down on the wraps and focuses. 

Dick pins him twice before he picks up the conversation, which is longer than Tim thought it would take. “You feeling alright?” he asks innocently as Tim finds his feet, and dodges a swipe, returning a quick set of jabs that have Tim reeling back. “When you pulled off patrol early, we were a bit worried. Everything okay?” 

Tim flexes his hands. They still ache, but not as adamantly before. A few more landed punches and they’ll be throbbing enough that Tim won’t even feel his not-soulmate’s pain. 

He’s still not convinced it's his soulmate. Can’t be. He’s sticking with his theory. 

“My hands,” he explains, and aims a kick to Dick’s ribs. He springs out of reach and goes back to circling, so Tim meets him halfway. “Started hurting, couldn’t-” He grunts as Dick’s heel connects with his bicep. “-couldn’t hold my staff.” 

Dick pauses, straightening a little as a frown creases his brow. “Like soulmate hurting?” 

“Yeah.” 

Dick settles back into a stance, so Tim starts forward again, but he can see Dick’s digesting that. He can see the questions spiralling behind his blue eyes: aren’t they dead? Haven’t they been incommunicado for four years? Why now? What’s the significance? 

He chooses, “Anything else?” 

Tim pauses, blinking, and Dick nails him in the thigh hard enough that he does down to one knee with a yelp. Dick backs off while he regains his feet, and Tim braces on his legs to push upright. “No, just hands, I think,” he gasps, and brings his fists back up. 

“Any clues as to who they are?” 

Tim shakes his head, and skims a punch past Dick’s swollen cheekbone before he decides that’s probably not good sportsmanship. “Haven’t got a lot to go off.” 

Dick laughs. “If anyone was going to decipher who their soulmate was, it’d be you, Tim. You worked Bruce and I out with next to nothing to go off.” 

Tim smiles, but is doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Sure. Coming from the guy who found his soulmate in record timing.” 

Dick shrugs, and takes a clip across the shoulder. He dances back and plants himself in a better stance. “Mine was a bit obvious. I missed the first few years of hints; chalked it up to leftover aches from patrols. But the numbness sort of slapped me in the face. Bit hard to miss.” 

Yeah, Tim can sort of empathise with that. The sensation of losing feeling in a phantom limb that was never there has a way of sticking with a person. He felt it back when his soulmate had first gone AWOL, and talking with Dick about Babs post-Joker had cemented Tim's belief that his soulmate was really, properly dead. 

Tim lets his fists drop, and Dick notices the change in posture a half-beat beforehand, sliding out of his pose. “Are you two… talking?” 

Dick offers him a smile that seems watery compared to his trademark gleams. “We’re working through it. But, uh, not together, officially, no, since that's what you're asking. We’re staying friends though, don’t worry about that.” 

Tim hadn’t been worried about that. Dick and Babs may have been soulmates and partners, but they were friends and allies foremost. He starts picking apart the wraps, watching Dick as he begins to warm down. “You think you’ll get back together?” 

Dick leverages his elbow back behind his head and gives a stilted shrug. “Probably not this time. But I’m an optimist.” 

“You think that’ll work with you being soulmates and all?” 

Dick gives him an odd look, straightening somewhat. “Absolutely. Look, being soulmates isn’t a death sentence; it’s not set in stone. I’m a big believer in transformational soulmates - someone who’s there to inspire you, and comfort you, and understand you. You don’t have to love someone romantically for them to be that person for you. Babs _is_ that person for me. She’s my soulmate, unconditionally. But she’s not my ‘one’, or whatever you want to call it.” 

He steps forwards, attuned to Tim’s disconcertion, and places a brotherly hand on Tim’s shoulder. He meets Dick’s gaze. 

“Hey, is that what’s got you worried? That whoever your soulmate is, that you don’t know if you’ll be romantically compatible? Because you don’t have to worry about that hogwash. Your soulmate could be your arch nemesis,” he jokes with a broad grin, and shakes Tim a bit, as if to rattle the words in, “as long as they inspire you, then that’s all you need. Take it as it comes, kiddo. Can’t do much more than that.” 

"Sure," Tim says as Dick lifts his hand off and goes back to warming down. Tim can take as many more agonising episodes as his soulmates needs to throw his way. If that's what it takes to even  _have_ a soulmate again, Tim will weather it. Can't do much more than that. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, I'm supposed to be focusing on the other JayTim fics. I am, I promise!  
> I'm just juggling editing a completed story and pouring out another original-AU story. But I'll have something out in June, I promise. 
> 
> I may or may not add on a few more chapters to this one. I try to hold myself to the principle that hurt must be equally balanced by comfort, so I'll probably drag this out a bit longer. If only so I can see my boys happy.


End file.
